Titus de Bobula
Titus de Bobula (1878–1961) was a Hungarian‑American architect, businessman, and political activist. He was born in Budapest on December 24, 1878, and studied architecture with his father and older brother. He moved to the United States around 1897, first working in New York, then in Ohio, and finally in Pittsburgh.
In Pittsburgh he opened offices and promoted an American style of architecture, championing reinforced concrete for houses. His best‑known designs were churches, especially St. John the Baptist Greek Catholic Church in Munhall, built in 1903 and influenced by Art Nouveau from Budapest and Vienna.
In 1904 he faced a manslaughter charge after a fatal car accident but was acquitted. In 1910 he married Eurana Dinkey Mock, a relative of Charles M. Schwab’s wife, and the couple moved to New York, living in a mansion he designed in Spuyten Duyvil. He had a dispute with Schwab over money and sued for slander in 1919.
The couple moved to Hungary in the early 1920s. There de Bobula supported far‑right causes, edited an anti‑Semitic newspaper called Amerika, and adopted a fascist stance. In 1923 he was arrested in connection with a coup plot, but he was released and left Hungary with Eurana. There were rumors he was an agent for Henry Ford, but Ford denied them.
In the 1930s de Bobula worked as an arms dealer and designer, filing a grenade patent in 1934 and being named a submachine gun importer in 1935 testimony before the Senate. Some sources say he did architectural work for Nikola Tesla, though details are unclear.
He moved to Washington, D.C., after 1939 and remained involved with his wife’s family estate. The couple were evicted from their home in 1944. In the 1950s he was involved in a real‑estate dispute with a CIA employee and was described as a “litigious crank” in agency papers. He died in 1961 and is buried in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 19:11 (CET).